On the face of it, fitness and strength are totally different skills.
I mean, look at your archetypal endurance athlete versus a strongman.
One is lean, wiry and gazelle-like.
The other is almost as wide as they are tall, with shoulders like bowling balls, and so overly muscled, they’re about as flexible as an oak tree.
So you might think achieving both better endurance and greater strength is impossible.
But that’s not the case.
For one thing, we’re not looking at the extremes here.
Being a stronger triathlete is good… But you don’t need to be heaving up 200-pound atlas stones or lifting cars overhead!
Which is good news, as it means you can see real world, tri-specific strength gains without diving into a full-on powerlifting routine.
Really, all you need is 60-90 minutes of specific strength exercises per week.
What the best exercises are depends on a number of factors.
(Which is something our Olympic level coaches dive into with our Brownlee Fitness Squad.)
But we’re looking at things like lunges, squats, step-ups and deadlift variations for the lower body, and presses, pulldowns, rows, chin-ups and pushups for the upper body.
Then after that, it’s all about periodisation.
Ie. Having some periods of training where you focus more on endurance and less on strength…
… and other periods where you go harder on the strength stuff, while easing back on the endurance volume.
For example, as you’re coming up to a race, you’ll probably want to reduce how much strength work you’re doing, to allow for better recovery to focus on your aerobic fitness.
Then, after the event, that’s a great time to give a little more TLC to what you do in the gym.
So to answer the question of - “Can I get stronger AND fitter?”...
Yes, you can.
It just comes down to working out what you actually want to get out of your training…
Periodising throughout the year…
And then putting in some personal tweaks for your own schedule, goals and training history.
If you want our help with that:
⇒ Check Out our Brownlee Fitness Squad Here
The Brownlee Fitness Team
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